(AP)  Columbia city officials say they hope an energy-efficient home will be a model for future low-income housing projects.

Habitat for Humanity is building the “net-zero” home, which includes solar panels and a solar water heater, low-flow plumbing fixtures and LED lighting.

 It’s the first time the organization has built such a home, which also has 45 percent more insulation than previous homes. The home also will be completely accessible to the disabled.

About a year ago, the city asked non-profit organizations to submit designs for energy-efficient homes that low-income families could afford.

The house will sell for $107,000. It is expected to be completed in late spring or mid-summer next year.

by Chuck Jolley

There were so many stories, ranging from the trivial to the amusing to those things that really created a moment when we had to ask “WTF” (Where’s the Farmer). I’m sure this year’s top stories were no different in their impact on our lives than last year’s biggies. We’ve been chasing a lot of the same issues for years.

The leaders of this infamous group are best described as alphabet soup issues: LFTB, GMO, MCOOL, ACA, HSUS.  The rest need more descriptive terms. All of them can be called nothing new. They were hot issues in the past and most of them will stay with us through the new year and the next.

Here they are in no particular order:

ACA:  How’s your health, my friend? The feds want to know, at least the feds on the left side of the aisle. Those that sit on the other side? Not so much. No other program has created such a controversy since the 1960’s war on poverty begat Medicare and Medicaid. The Republican party tried unsuccessfully over 40 times to roll it back, a huge waste of congressional time. The Supremes OK’d it by one vote. Obama’s vaunted technical team dropped the ball on the web site when the program rolled out in October. No matter, it is the law of the land and the controversy will continue ad nauseum.

GMO: Are they the golden bullet that will save us from world starvation or an evil product of the villainous Monsantoian tribe of St. Louis that will ruin our genetics and eventually kill anyone who consumes anything made from them? Must products containing GMO’s be labeled so consumers can make informed decisions as some special interest groups insist or is labeling a waste of time and money as other groups claim?

LFTB:  BPI’s lean, finely textured beef (LFTB), commonly known by the ill-informed as ‘pink slime,’ was repeatedly assailed by ABC News. The production crew that created the news report grabbed the sensationalism generated by some obscure British short order cook who poured a bottle of household ammonia into an ancient washing machine filled with meat to falsely demonstrate how the product was made. Bettina Elias Segal, a woman with no scientific background, jumped on the same washing machine band wagon and created a nation-wide incident. Science be damned. Plants shut down, hundreds of jobs were lost, and BPI filed a billion dollar law suit against ABC. The trial has just begun.

MCOOL:  To label or not to label, that is the question that’s driving a toxic wedge between two great trading partners. Should meat from Canada be labeled as such so American consumers will know that they are not ‘buying American” thereby protecting them from heinous infections from foreign goods? Does the U.S. have to abide by WTO decisions even though we have gone to their ‘court of appeals’ asking for relief as often as others have taken us to task? One thing is certain; the WTO said no to our original labeling requirements and the USDA remedied the situation by issuing essentially the same regs. Will they say no again? Will the Canadian government make good on their threat to issue retaliatory tariffs? First answer might come from a possible farm bill.

Farm Bill:  Will it finally happen? Or will milk prices skyrocket, creating a painful blowback from the enraged mothers of America? The recent budget agreement shows the warring political factions of both the House and Senate can work together when all else fails so will they be able to make nice long enough to put together a grossly overdue farm bill? Or will it come in bits and pieces? Will it solve the MCOOL issue before the WTO gets to it?

Super Bugs:  Agriculture is being asked to stop or greatly reduce the use of antibiotics to solve a problem that seems to be caused by the overuse of human antibiotics. My friend Dr. Richard Raymond says “Two major classes of antibiotics used in human medicine, Macrolides and Cephalosporins, comprise lesss than 0.3 percent of antibiotics used in animals – because of FDA actions taken in the last decade. 83 percent of antibiotics used in animal health are either not allowed in human medicine, or ancient antibiotics for which the aforementioned macrolides would be a much better drug of first choice.” The chances of the human medical profession cleaning its own house first? Not good.

Chipotle (and Panera): How do you like those award winning cartoons that depict American agriculture as something practiced in the deepest depths of hell? Those floppy Chipotle scare crows sure are cute, aren’t they? As long as these two chains (big food?) keep attacking the hand that feeds them (big ag?) and claiming they only use the purest of foods grown by the most natural and organic small farms (as long as the supply is adequate and competitively priced, let’s not get ahead of the bottom line) we will be treated to more emotional brow-beating in 2014. Commercials, you gotta love ’em!

HSUS:  We can add PETA, MFA and the usual animal rights suspects to this list. They were all very active this year. We can expect more ‘hidden cam’ work, cleverly edited after weeks or months of undercover work and revealed to a horrified group of reporters for maximum impact. Forget that some of that footage might actually contain real instances of animal abuse that was allowed to continue for weeks or months. Forget also that some of the footage purportedly showing animal abuse might just be a clever angle on a free range chicken doing a little sun bathing or a downed cow bleeding after a difficult birth. The goal here is to do a hearts and flowers appeal to win converts and donations. Reality need not be recognized.

Climate change:  Are we really getting warmer or is it just some plot by evil lefties to scare people? This past November was the 37th consecutive month that was warmer than the same month a year ago. Those mild summer days and cool summer nights that made southern France a great place to grow wine grapes and made British wine not so good? British vineyards are now making some top quality wines. Ice packs at both poles are still shrinking. The numbers are starting to show a definite trend toward much more warmth but is it man made or just the usual and ancient weather patterns repeating themselves? We will debate it until sun and fun cruises through the North Passageway are regularly scheduled Princess Cruises or newly expanding Alaskan glaciers start to threaten Juneau.

(AP) — A Michigan university has issued its annual list of annoying words, and those flexible enough to take selfies of themselves twerking should take note.

Since 1975, Lake Superior State University has announced a batch of words to banish due to overuse and other faults. Spokesman Tom Pink says there were more than 2,000 nominations this year.

“Selfie” led the way. It means snapping a self-photo, usually with a smartphone.

“Twerk” or “twerking,” a sexually provocative way of dancing, found a dominant place due to Miley Cyrus’ MTV Video Music Awards performance.

And Lake Superior State says enough already with “Mr. Mom,” a reference to dads who take care of kids.

Pat Byrnes of Chicago says the title is an insult to millions of men who are primary caregivers at home.

 (AP) – Missouri’s population continues to grow at a slower rate than the national average.

New estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau show Missouri’s population of 6 million grew by fewer than 20,000 people from 2012 to 2013. That’s a growth rate of about one-third of a percent.

Nationally, the population is estimated to have risen by 0.7 percent from 2012 to 2013.

Missouri’s growth of 0.3 percent was typical for the Midwest. It was better than Illinois, about the same as Arkansas, Kansas and Kentucky, but lagged behind the rest of its neighboring states.

Missouri’s population growth rate ranked 35th nationally.

The Census Bureau says North Dakota, Utah, Colorado and Texas had the fastest growth rates.

 (AP) – Missouri utility regulators have again pushed back their report on a Kansas City restaurant explosion that killed a waitress.

The Kansas City Star reports that Missouri Public Service Commission staff had promised to publish the results in early December. But the commission posted on its website Monday that the report is now likely to be filed on or before Feb. 6 – nearly a year after the blast at JJ’s restaurant on the Country Club Plaza.

Authorities have said the Feb. 19 explosion was caused when a natural gas supply line was breached by a crew from Heartland Midwest, an Olathe, Kan.-based cable company subcontractor. Forty-six-year-old Megan Cramer was killed and more than a dozen people were injured.

(AP) — Businesses, ag producers and cooperatives in Nebraska have received more than $20 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development programs.

USDA Rural Development State Director Maxine Moul says the funding was delivered during the federal government’s 2013 fiscal year. The programs assisted 153 businesses, 75 ag producers and four cooperatives in rural parts of the state.

The USDA says the funding created or saved a total of 258 jobs.

The programs including guaranteed loans, small business grants and funding for renewable energy projects.

Moul says funding is available for fiscal year 2014. The USDA is accepting applications.

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Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and U.S. Senator Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) have called on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to immediately stop their unlawful regulation of family farms. Sens. Moran, Johanns and a bipartisan group of 41 their Senate colleagues have also directed OSHA to issue updated guidance correcting their misinterpretation of current law. The request was made in a joint letter to Department of Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, who oversees OSHA.

“This is not the first time this administration has proved that Washington’s values are not rural America’s values through regulatory over-reach into the family farm,” Sen. Moran said. “I am committed to working with my colleagues to protect the individual rights of farmers and ranchers, and make certain OSHA does not continue to misinterpret the law.”

Since 1976, Congress has exempted small, family-run farms from OSHA regulations, but in a 2011 memo OSHA asserted that on-farm grain storage and handling was not part of farm operations. The memo essentially expanded OSHA’s regulatory scope to nearly every farm in the country without going through the established rule making process that allows Congressional review and public comment, in defiance of the law.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Medical records software maker Cerner Corp. has finished purchasing the property needed for its planned $4.3 billion office park.

City officials say the 237-acre land acquisition was completed last week. The site was formerly occupied by the massive Bannister Mall shopping center, which was demolished in 2009.

Over the next decade, the North Kansas City-based company plans to build a phased, 4.5 million square-foot campus that is expected to employ 15,000 people. The new campus would the largest in the area, surpassing the Sprint headquarters in Overland Park, Kan.

Cerner currently employs more than 9,000 people in the metropolitan area, with many of them based at an office complex in the Village West area of western Wyandotte County, Kan.